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As a landlord of single family homes, I have to look at the detailed credit history of potential tenants. Before I even get to that stage I let them know the i

As a landlord of single family homes, I have to look at the detailed credit history of potential tenants. Before I even get to that stage I let them know the income requirements, etc. so usually we are looking at the top 3 applicants out of the 30 that applied. With almost no exception, the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die. The average credit report I see is about a 500 and it's filled with missed payments, loans sent to collections, etc. Then, right at the top, in the last two or three months will be new loans for expensive cars and jewelery. It's mindboggling and sad. Most of my tenants have a nicer car than me (I own a pretty vanilla $30k sedan). The renters usually come just above the 3x income to rent ratio and they never fail to pay their rent. But I don't really ever forsee them owning a home if they continue to make luxury purchases that prevent them from saving. The loan industry really enables a life of debt.

fathyb 4y ago
> The loan industry really enables a life of debt. It really does, and I've seen so many people fall into it, especially at the beginning of their career. Financial responsibility should be something taught early on at schools. With cryptos today, maybe even with the risks behind investing. That said, I'm glad I live in the majority of countries where someone more privileged than me cannot judge my financial decisions to give me access to housing. I consider myself financially responsible, and credit scores aren't a thing here anyway, but I find it very disturbing.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  What happens in your country if you move into a house and then just stop paying?
  - into_infinity 4y ago
    It is pretty unusual in most parts of the world for landlords to get access to one's credit records. Credit reporting is a pretty US-specific phenomenon, even if you're applying for a bank loan or a credit card. You usually present proof of earnings and possibly references from previous landlords. And if you get unlucky - well, same as in the US, in many of the nicest markets, you're facing an uphill battle to evict people.
    - dazc 4y ago
      In the UK you invariably rent through an agent who has access to credit reporting, the cost of which is passed on to both you and the landlord. If you're self employed or a company director then there are a few other things you have to pay for, £45 to look at your balance sheet, for example, which is freely available to anyone else. I know a few landlords and despite the efforts they take to find the perfect tenant, they all have tales to tell of people who passed all the tests with flying colours but soon turned out to be a costly disaster.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      Completely normal in Canada also
    - oezi 4y ago
      I guess it depends per country. In Germany it has become common that the landlord will require a credit score (called Schufa) plus the things you mentioned (3 months of pay slips, references of balances paid from past landlord). Strong data protection rules have made it that there is now a credit score report which is only giving you a pass/fail so that landlords don't know too many details.
      - wink 4y ago
        AFAICT Schufa is not like a US credit score. It's just OK/NOT OK, or a list of "infractions". Which means if you always paid your stuff on time, a virtual +1 is the same as a +1000, and the visible result will just be "OK" and after a while the entries will age out if it was a "NOT OK"
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
      US has very strict non-discrimination laws in housing. Requesting credit reports is a way to circumvent those laws.
    - sadpasture 4y ago
      Standard practice in Germany, although the credit system here is a bit better than the US since it works by "demerits" rather than "building credit". Meaning you start out high, and only lose credit if you fail to make payments on a loan. Also I think landlords can only see a high level summary and final score, not the details of your financial situation.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    One of three things happens in my country: * A mafioso comes for a chat with the tenant and they move out. This rarely happens. * The case is presented to court and they'll evict the tenant in about 2 months. This usually happens. * The tenant has small children and is poor. The owner is fucked as the court won't do anything - the tenants children have a basic human right to a roof over their head. This also rarely happens, but when it does, the damages are huge. My great aunt lost 1-2 years of rent and about 10k in damages due to neglect this way. Because of this, there are interviews for tenants. Mostly just a chat, but rarely you need to prove you're employed and provide bank statements.
  - walkhour 4y ago
    What happens in most cases is that rents go up, because landlords have to factor in this uncertainty. And the debt of the non paying tenants is collectivized.
    - yakak 4y ago
      Rental prices are based on the rental market price and then affect house prices. A landlord deciding they aren't going to make enough for their risk at the market rate and selling doesn't change much as whoever buys either stops renting or is going to rent it out.
- FrontierPsych 4y ago
  >Financial responsibility should be something taught early on at schools. 100% guarantee that this does not matter one iota. I've tried and tried to help so many people with their financial picture. You would have more luck talking to a brick wall. People don't care. They just simply do not care. This is because most people - maybe 95% - are ruled by their emotions rather than rationality. Or to put it more precisely, people make decisions based on emotions and then use their rational mind after they make their decision to rationalize their purchase. Also, becoming financially responsible is just about the simplest thing to do, at least at the beginning stages. All it requires is addition and subtraction, mostly, which we learn in second grade or whenever it is. Second grade. I remember opening my first savings and checking account when I was 15 years old (when you could do it yourself without parent's permission). The person who helped my took about 10 minutes to help me understand, that's all you need. The internet is inundated with videos and classes on basic financial knowledge. I'm sure that I could go to Udemy and find 500 courses on basic financial training and pay $15 for it....hmmm, let me go check right now...ok, typed "personal finance" in the search and it came back with "6,496 results for “personal finance”" People don't take those classes because they don't want to take them. Probably personal finance is one of the topics that is #1 for total courses available. Honestly, personal finance is so easy. It is just about the easiest thing to do. Sure if you get into complicated stuff, if you have $200 million in the bank/assets/whatever, maybe it is hard. But for the general person, no, it is simple. And the part that someone doesn't get, there are a ton of videos and articles on that, too. I have gotten exceptionally angry at some people because they were so broke and asked me for help. There I was, spending countless hours with them, doing what you said and educating them, and they go out and blow a HUGE chunk of their feeble savings on the stupidest shit. I got angry because I knew these people and got emotionally invested in helping them (I don't regret getting emotionally invested). I don't help people anymore. It's an exercise in frustration and futility. People simply do notwant to be financially responsible...well, maybe in the 20/80 law, 20% are financially responsible. The other 80%...don't waste time on them. Kind of a rant, but it still burns deep in my soul, because the people I tried to help are good people. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Pearls before swine.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > All it requires is addition and subtraction, mostly, which we learn in second grade or whenever it is. To be fair that's not quite true. For example credit cards go out of the way to make their interest and penalties algorithm obscure in order to try to lock people into paying interest forever.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Eextra953 4y ago
Why do you have to look at their credit history before allowing someone to rent from you? Shouldn't their income be all you need? Whether you realize it or not, you are a part of the system that enables a life of debt. Owning a home allows people to build equity and sets a foundation for a stable life. By being a land lord, you are preventing people from buying and building equity. Instead their hard earned money goes right into your pocket.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  it's hard to evict people. missed payments means loss of $
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > Why do you have to look at their credit history before allowing someone to rent from you? Shouldn't their income be all you need? Am I missing something obvious? Isn't it just because not everyone who misses payments is low-income?
- kube-system 4y ago
  The rest of the comment makes it pretty clear why income is not the whole story. Overextending finances can happen in any income bracket. Renting is a service that is available to everyone, not just those who can’t afford houses. Most people who buy houses previously rented. Gotta live somewhere when you save up.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    > Renting is a service that is available to everyone Go try to rent a decent place with no credit history and then tell me you still have that opinion.
    - za3faran 4y ago
      In some other countries they don't check or care about credit history, only that the salary is able to cover the rent.
onphonenow 4y ago
Other factors in fairness are kids and medical stuff. I spent 3k fixing up a wonderful 3.5k used car - have had it for years - runs great even though 16 years old. I do want / need to buy a new car but prices seem crazy to me! Kia soul maybe as a cheap car? Everything else has puffed up to high 20s and 30s (and far far higher) - this old car costs nothing to insure - and Kia seems to have waiting lists around the block for warranty work. My old car I can have anyone work in it without warranty issues. It made me wonder if all the required features and electronics are puffing up costs a bit?
tomxor 4y ago
> the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die. Did you read the article? Genuine question. Because you seem to be completely missing the main point it's making, it's not exactly lacking in examples.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Not GP but these comments and the article are not unrelated. TFA says amortized cost of things is lower when you have access to cash, or cheap credit. Buying in bulk in large shops is cheaper than buying small amounts at local shops. Proper renting is cheaper than weekly-billed accomodation. But then GP is saying, the poor often have better access to credit than it might seem, it just goes to things that don't improve their financial situation. Nice cars and jewelry for instance. I don't really know and suspect both are true to an extent, but chipping in since poverty is fascinating to me and I don't fully understand it (I come from and remain in a modest background btw). Sometimes it's just a lack of cash but often it seems not as simple as that.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    > Nice cars and jewelry for instance. I don't really know and suspect both are true to an extent Yes, it probably is a bit of both, but the GP seems biased towards colouring everyone with the caricature of being in a financial position purely of their own making. It seems incredibly cliche like shouting "get a job you lazy bum" and ignoring any systemic factors and other forces at play as outlines in this article. I personally have been in situations very close to the threshold of not being able to make rent in the past, and I'm very very far from a "consumer". When the window of time in which you have to make ends meet is on the order of days or weeks it's impossible to make long term optimal financial decisions, not merely because of stress, but because in the short term other people need your money, like this unempathetic landlord who apparently owns many properties.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    If they're unrelated then maybe they should have posted in a different thread with a different article.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pasquinelli 4y ago
you make your living off them, so you have a psychlogical incentive to see them in a certain way.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
You're not renting to poor people ... and you're rationalizing. poor people don't have 3x income to rent ratio, middle class people do. poor people don't drive $30k+ vehicles, middle class people do. The only thing you got right is that poor people make bad financial decisions. Often times they're forced into it, although not nearly always. Poor people trade time for money. People are often predatory towards the poor because there's a combination of money being there but not having enough to protect yourself from the bullshit. Personally, the one group of people I have absolutely no sympathy for are landlords, and I say this as someone with a 6-figure income who rents. I grew up dirt poor, to the point of being homeless. And the number of times I've had a landlord try to pull some shit only to be shocked when my lawyer got in touch is entirely too damned high. Only for the problem to magically go away. And why? Because you would never imagine my resources by looking at me and how I live. landlords do this shit as a matter of course and only back off when they realize not only CAN you defend yourself, but you WILL defend yourself. Think about it like this. There are laws on the books that very explicitly state if a landlord makes a persons property inaccessible before they're legally required to move, that person can sue them for the value of everything lost. 1. How do you think I know that (they gave away 2 of my pets, reptiles)? 2. Why did that law need to be passed? --- I'm sure there are landlords that act in good faith as decent human beings, but it seems as if there's something unique about landlords that makes it difficult. In all the time I've been renting I've met a single decent property manager, and no decent land lords.
- joenot443 4y ago
  > the one group of people I have absolutely no sympathy for are landlords Going through life categorizing people into buckets and then proudly proclaiming you have zero sympathy for ANYONE in that bucket isn't a mature or healthy way to view the world. It seems like you have some really intense bones to pick (your reptile story) and are extending that anecdotal experience onto a group of tens of millions, a mental leap which is usually frowned upon in circles like this. Just my thoughts.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    Hey man, I get it. I'm a worse, less moral, human being than you are. It's just my lot in life, and as such, I deserve to be judged for it. But I must ask, could you judge in silence? I suspect I'm not the only one who finds the noise distracting.
breadbreadbread 4y ago
> the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die The point of this article is that those "horrible financial decisions" aren't mistakes, they are costs of living that are imposed upon those that are already struggling. Sometimes it may be irresponsibility, other times it is an inevitability, a distinction that you truly cant discern from the outside. It's possible that splurging on a car might be a long term benefit, maybe fuel efficiency or maintainence costs are money savers after the initial buy in. You don't know the personal calculus of each decision so maybe don't assign motive to what renters are doing under the heel of capitalism. And it turns out, these people need a roof over their heads, which you could provide at a cheaper cost if you chose to but instead you take a chunk of their paycheck each month as your personal profit. Like you could help people. You could treat housing as a necessary resource and not a commodity. Overnight you can alleviate people's debt if you wanted to.
- smn1234 4y ago
  very fair, but from my handful of observations I've seen people chase brand name over the quality benefits a brand carries (e.g. maintenance, efficiency) to consider
caeril 4y ago
I grew up around a lot of poor people and I saw much of the same. I wish this article broke down the "food" and "clothing" categories into the specific products they are purchasing. A little anecdata: These families would buy brand-name sneakers and jeans for their kids, whichever brand was popular that year, whereas I was on year two of home-sewn or no-brand cheap jeans. I'd go visit friends and see boxes of brand-name Lucky Charms, Apple Jacks, etc, and be envious versus the bulk oatmeal I choked down every morning. Their mothers were getting their "nails did" regularly whilst mine had perpetual dishwater hands. My parents didn't make much money, but they knew how to spend it wisely. Other poor families, not so much. Another anecdata: My father-in-law grew up absolutely dirt poor (far far worse than my parents), but did reasonably well for himself over time. He still has significant debt and inability to manage his money because he has to buy luxury goods regularly as some sort of compensatory mechanism to ensure that other people would never see him to be poor. At the end of the day, when I look at poor people's spending habits, I see the same thing you do: they are hooked on unnecessary spending. I suspect there is something in the human psyche that makes poor people try to compensate for it by spending to not appear poor, thus exacerbating the cycle. It's a largely self-inflicted problem.
- derivagral 4y ago
  Consider that some of those appearances aren't just for social circles but for job status. As someone in startup software (now remote!) my wardrobe choices are far broader than someone working in service who may be expected to wear and use the products they're selling.

fathyb 4y ago

> The loan industry really enables a life of debt. It really does, and I've seen so many people fall into it, especially at the beginning of their career. Financial responsibility should be something taught early on at schools. With cryptos today, maybe even with the risks behind investing. That said, I'm glad I live in the majority of countries where someone more privileged than me cannot judge my financial decisions to give me access to housing. I consider myself financially responsible, and credit scores aren't a thing here anyway, but I find it very disturbing.

josephcsible 4y ago
What happens in your country if you move into a house and then just stop paying?
- into_infinity 4y ago
  It is pretty unusual in most parts of the world for landlords to get access to one's credit records. Credit reporting is a pretty US-specific phenomenon, even if you're applying for a bank loan or a credit card. You usually present proof of earnings and possibly references from previous landlords. And if you get unlucky - well, same as in the US, in many of the nicest markets, you're facing an uphill battle to evict people.
  - dazc 4y ago
    In the UK you invariably rent through an agent who has access to credit reporting, the cost of which is passed on to both you and the landlord. If you're self employed or a company director then there are a few other things you have to pay for, £45 to look at your balance sheet, for example, which is freely available to anyone else. I know a few landlords and despite the efforts they take to find the perfect tenant, they all have tales to tell of people who passed all the tests with flying colours but soon turned out to be a costly disaster.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    Completely normal in Canada also
  - oezi 4y ago
    I guess it depends per country. In Germany it has become common that the landlord will require a credit score (called Schufa) plus the things you mentioned (3 months of pay slips, references of balances paid from past landlord). Strong data protection rules have made it that there is now a credit score report which is only giving you a pass/fail so that landlords don't know too many details.
    - wink 4y ago
      AFAICT Schufa is not like a US credit score. It's just OK/NOT OK, or a list of "infractions". Which means if you always paid your stuff on time, a virtual +1 is the same as a +1000, and the visible result will just be "OK" and after a while the entries will age out if it was a "NOT OK"
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
    US has very strict non-discrimination laws in housing. Requesting credit reports is a way to circumvent those laws.
  - sadpasture 4y ago
    Standard practice in Germany, although the credit system here is a bit better than the US since it works by "demerits" rather than "building credit". Meaning you start out high, and only lose credit if you fail to make payments on a loan. Also I think landlords can only see a high level summary and final score, not the details of your financial situation.
- tpxl 4y ago
  One of three things happens in my country: * A mafioso comes for a chat with the tenant and they move out. This rarely happens. * The case is presented to court and they'll evict the tenant in about 2 months. This usually happens. * The tenant has small children and is poor. The owner is fucked as the court won't do anything - the tenants children have a basic human right to a roof over their head. This also rarely happens, but when it does, the damages are huge. My great aunt lost 1-2 years of rent and about 10k in damages due to neglect this way. Because of this, there are interviews for tenants. Mostly just a chat, but rarely you need to prove you're employed and provide bank statements.
- walkhour 4y ago
  What happens in most cases is that rents go up, because landlords have to factor in this uncertainty. And the debt of the non paying tenants is collectivized.
  - yakak 4y ago
    Rental prices are based on the rental market price and then affect house prices. A landlord deciding they aren't going to make enough for their risk at the market rate and selling doesn't change much as whoever buys either stops renting or is going to rent it out.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
>Financial responsibility should be something taught early on at schools. 100% guarantee that this does not matter one iota. I've tried and tried to help so many people with their financial picture. You would have more luck talking to a brick wall. People don't care. They just simply do not care. This is because most people - maybe 95% - are ruled by their emotions rather than rationality. Or to put it more precisely, people make decisions based on emotions and then use their rational mind after they make their decision to rationalize their purchase. Also, becoming financially responsible is just about the simplest thing to do, at least at the beginning stages. All it requires is addition and subtraction, mostly, which we learn in second grade or whenever it is. Second grade. I remember opening my first savings and checking account when I was 15 years old (when you could do it yourself without parent's permission). The person who helped my took about 10 minutes to help me understand, that's all you need. The internet is inundated with videos and classes on basic financial knowledge. I'm sure that I could go to Udemy and find 500 courses on basic financial training and pay $15 for it....hmmm, let me go check right now...ok, typed "personal finance" in the search and it came back with "6,496 results for “personal finance”" People don't take those classes because they don't want to take them. Probably personal finance is one of the topics that is #1 for total courses available. Honestly, personal finance is so easy. It is just about the easiest thing to do. Sure if you get into complicated stuff, if you have $200 million in the bank/assets/whatever, maybe it is hard. But for the general person, no, it is simple. And the part that someone doesn't get, there are a ton of videos and articles on that, too. I have gotten exceptionally angry at some people because they were so broke and asked me for help. There I was, spending countless hours with them, doing what you said and educating them, and they go out and blow a HUGE chunk of their feeble savings on the stupidest shit. I got angry because I knew these people and got emotionally invested in helping them (I don't regret getting emotionally invested). I don't help people anymore. It's an exercise in frustration and futility. People simply do notwant to be financially responsible...well, maybe in the 20/80 law, 20% are financially responsible. The other 80%...don't waste time on them. Kind of a rant, but it still burns deep in my soul, because the people I tried to help are good people. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Pearls before swine.
- jjav 4y ago
  > All it requires is addition and subtraction, mostly, which we learn in second grade or whenever it is. To be fair that's not quite true. For example credit cards go out of the way to make their interest and penalties algorithm obscure in order to try to lock people into paying interest forever.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Eextra953 4y ago

Why do you have to look at their credit history before allowing someone to rent from you? Shouldn't their income be all you need? Whether you realize it or not, you are a part of the system that enables a life of debt. Owning a home allows people to build equity and sets a foundation for a stable life. By being a land lord, you are preventing people from buying and building equity. Instead their hard earned money goes right into your pocket.

paulpauper 4y ago
it's hard to evict people. missed payments means loss of $
josephcsible 4y ago
> Why do you have to look at their credit history before allowing someone to rent from you? Shouldn't their income be all you need? Am I missing something obvious? Isn't it just because not everyone who misses payments is low-income?
kube-system 4y ago
The rest of the comment makes it pretty clear why income is not the whole story. Overextending finances can happen in any income bracket. Renting is a service that is available to everyone, not just those who can’t afford houses. Most people who buy houses previously rented. Gotta live somewhere when you save up.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  > Renting is a service that is available to everyone Go try to rent a decent place with no credit history and then tell me you still have that opinion.
  - za3faran 4y ago
    In some other countries they don't check or care about credit history, only that the salary is able to cover the rent.

onphonenow 4y ago

Other factors in fairness are kids and medical stuff. I spent 3k fixing up a wonderful 3.5k used car - have had it for years - runs great even though 16 years old. I do want / need to buy a new car but prices seem crazy to me! Kia soul maybe as a cheap car? Everything else has puffed up to high 20s and 30s (and far far higher) - this old car costs nothing to insure - and Kia seems to have waiting lists around the block for warranty work. My old car I can have anyone work in it without warranty issues. It made me wonder if all the required features and electronics are puffing up costs a bit?

tomxor 4y ago

> the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die. Did you read the article? Genuine question. Because you seem to be completely missing the main point it's making, it's not exactly lacking in examples.

rich_sasha 4y ago
Not GP but these comments and the article are not unrelated. TFA says amortized cost of things is lower when you have access to cash, or cheap credit. Buying in bulk in large shops is cheaper than buying small amounts at local shops. Proper renting is cheaper than weekly-billed accomodation. But then GP is saying, the poor often have better access to credit than it might seem, it just goes to things that don't improve their financial situation. Nice cars and jewelry for instance. I don't really know and suspect both are true to an extent, but chipping in since poverty is fascinating to me and I don't fully understand it (I come from and remain in a modest background btw). Sometimes it's just a lack of cash but often it seems not as simple as that.
- tomxor 4y ago
  > Nice cars and jewelry for instance. I don't really know and suspect both are true to an extent Yes, it probably is a bit of both, but the GP seems biased towards colouring everyone with the caricature of being in a financial position purely of their own making. It seems incredibly cliche like shouting "get a job you lazy bum" and ignoring any systemic factors and other forces at play as outlines in this article. I personally have been in situations very close to the threshold of not being able to make rent in the past, and I'm very very far from a "consumer". When the window of time in which you have to make ends meet is on the order of days or weeks it's impossible to make long term optimal financial decisions, not merely because of stress, but because in the short term other people need your money, like this unempathetic landlord who apparently owns many properties.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  If they're unrelated then maybe they should have posted in a different thread with a different article.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pasquinelli 4y ago

you make your living off them, so you have a psychlogical incentive to see them in a certain way.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

You're not renting to poor people ... and you're rationalizing. poor people don't have 3x income to rent ratio, middle class people do. poor people don't drive $30k+ vehicles, middle class people do. The only thing you got right is that poor people make bad financial decisions. Often times they're forced into it, although not nearly always. Poor people trade time for money. People are often predatory towards the poor because there's a combination of money being there but not having enough to protect yourself from the bullshit. Personally, the one group of people I have absolutely no sympathy for are landlords, and I say this as someone with a 6-figure income who rents. I grew up dirt poor, to the point of being homeless. And the number of times I've had a landlord try to pull some shit only to be shocked when my lawyer got in touch is entirely too damned high. Only for the problem to magically go away. And why? Because you would never imagine my resources by looking at me and how I live. landlords do this shit as a matter of course and only back off when they realize not only CAN you defend yourself, but you WILL defend yourself. Think about it like this. There are laws on the books that very explicitly state if a landlord makes a persons property inaccessible before they're legally required to move, that person can sue them for the value of everything lost. 1. How do you think I know that (they gave away 2 of my pets, reptiles)? 2. Why did that law need to be passed? --- I'm sure there are landlords that act in good faith as decent human beings, but it seems as if there's something unique about landlords that makes it difficult. In all the time I've been renting I've met a single decent property manager, and no decent land lords.

joenot443 4y ago
> the one group of people I have absolutely no sympathy for are landlords Going through life categorizing people into buckets and then proudly proclaiming you have zero sympathy for ANYONE in that bucket isn't a mature or healthy way to view the world. It seems like you have some really intense bones to pick (your reptile story) and are extending that anecdotal experience onto a group of tens of millions, a mental leap which is usually frowned upon in circles like this. Just my thoughts.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Hey man, I get it. I'm a worse, less moral, human being than you are. It's just my lot in life, and as such, I deserve to be judged for it. But I must ask, could you judge in silence? I suspect I'm not the only one who finds the noise distracting.

breadbreadbread 4y ago

> the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die The point of this article is that those "horrible financial decisions" aren't mistakes, they are costs of living that are imposed upon those that are already struggling. Sometimes it may be irresponsibility, other times it is an inevitability, a distinction that you truly cant discern from the outside. It's possible that splurging on a car might be a long term benefit, maybe fuel efficiency or maintainence costs are money savers after the initial buy in. You don't know the personal calculus of each decision so maybe don't assign motive to what renters are doing under the heel of capitalism. And it turns out, these people need a roof over their heads, which you could provide at a cheaper cost if you chose to but instead you take a chunk of their paycheck each month as your personal profit. Like you could help people. You could treat housing as a necessary resource and not a commodity. Overnight you can alleviate people's debt if you wanted to.

smn1234 4y ago
very fair, but from my handful of observations I've seen people chase brand name over the quality benefits a brand carries (e.g. maintenance, efficiency) to consider

caeril 4y ago

I grew up around a lot of poor people and I saw much of the same. I wish this article broke down the "food" and "clothing" categories into the specific products they are purchasing. A little anecdata: These families would buy brand-name sneakers and jeans for their kids, whichever brand was popular that year, whereas I was on year two of home-sewn or no-brand cheap jeans. I'd go visit friends and see boxes of brand-name Lucky Charms, Apple Jacks, etc, and be envious versus the bulk oatmeal I choked down every morning. Their mothers were getting their "nails did" regularly whilst mine had perpetual dishwater hands. My parents didn't make much money, but they knew how to spend it wisely. Other poor families, not so much. Another anecdata: My father-in-law grew up absolutely dirt poor (far far worse than my parents), but did reasonably well for himself over time. He still has significant debt and inability to manage his money because he has to buy luxury goods regularly as some sort of compensatory mechanism to ensure that other people would never see him to be poor. At the end of the day, when I look at poor people's spending habits, I see the same thing you do: they are hooked on unnecessary spending. I suspect there is something in the human psyche that makes poor people try to compensate for it by spending to not appear poor, thus exacerbating the cycle. It's a largely self-inflicted problem.

derivagral 4y ago
Consider that some of those appearances aren't just for social circles but for job status. As someone in startup software (now remote!) my wardrobe choices are far broader than someone working in service who may be expected to wear and use the products they're selling.